I recently started my D&E re-build with the following goals. Re-use as many parts and materials I have from previous builds. Use the several improvements we have been discussing. Add improvements as the build progresses. Complete a gun that will fire 100 rounds without a misfire.
Roller has already shown that the D&E can be made to fire reliably. I especially like the color of his gun.
As I am now aware of the firing problems I started from the center outward instead of following the order of the instructions. I wanted to make the main shaft one piece so I could more easily mount it on my test stand. I made it from 5/8 chrome 1045 steel rod.
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I started by aligning the tail stock. As I was using a collet closer the tail stock was now not in line as it was much closer to the head stock.
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I turned and threaded the rear end.
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I added a brass capture nut to secure the parts.
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I turned and threaded the front end of the shaft. The measurements here will depend on the length of barrel you will use. I am re-using the barrels I have. They are a little shorter than the plans call for as I cut two barrel blanks from one purchased barrel. The shaft is not cut to final length yet. It has a center in it for testing.
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I made the front shaft from hex 3/8 ss rod. It is drilled out to fit over the extended main shaft. It is turned to accept a 3/8 needle bearing that will replace the brass bearing in the rail front. I added a small brass thrust washer.
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I added a brass collar to the shaft. The first steel collar I made did not have enough material to true it to the shaft so I replaces it with a larger brass one.
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Truing the collar to the shaft.
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I test fitted the parts and found I had to clean the threads.
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The barrel ring per drawings.
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The pan per drawing. I an using 1045 steel for these parts. The rim stop is brass.
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I made the bolt carrier two pieces. This was to shorten the length of the hole to be drilled. The instructions say to peck drill but I found this not to be accurate. I center drilled, then drilled progressively larger holes. I finished off with an extended end mill. The rear of the bolt carrier is bored to receive the three piece thrust bearing. One washer of the bearing replaces the spacer, detail 18, page 10.
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I made an arbor to aid in the indexing of the parts. It has a key way in it.
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The plans and the instructions call for the parts to be held in place by tightening the nut, bottom of page on page 11,to the main shaft, detail 17 on page 10, with the alignment as shown on detail A on page 11. This will not work as the parts will move in use. Also the alignment of these parts is critical for the firing of the gun. I first pinned the parts together but found this not to my liking.
I used a 1/8 key. After machining the parts to size I broached in a key way. The key way was used to index the parts on the arbor.
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The center of the barrel ring and pan holes is .077 to .080, as shown on page 19 detail D-D, off set from the center of the bolt carrier. This was easily set as it was one turn of my dividing head. This one turn is not exactly .080, it is a little more. But this allows for the firing pin to squarely strike the rim.
Key and key way in main shaft.
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Pan and lower bolt carrier aligned with key.
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When machining the pan do not forget to relieve the top edge 24 degrees as shown on page 7,
detail 12. This aids in feeding and ejecting the round.
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Parts aligned and assembled on the one piece shaft.
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Center drilling
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Roughing out the hole
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Finishing the hole to size with an extended end mill, I did not ream the holes as they will require filing and polishing for correct alignment after assembly.
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Milling the groove in the upper bolt carrier
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Turning the upper bolt carrier to finish size
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Machining the groove in the pan. I roughed out as much as possible with a square end mill. Then finished with a ball end mill.
The instructions call for a .270 dia mill but I used a .250 and made several passes.
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I moved the dividing head to 10 degrees and 50 degrees and continued.
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I found that removing the milling marks with a file worked best.
The purpose is to make all tool marks in the direction of the cartridge travel.
Any mark left by the end mill will affect smooth movement. Polishing will come later.
I made a die filer. I used a 1/4 round chain saw file.
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I used a new motor from Surplus Center but it would not start. I disassembled it and found that several of the wires in the start circuit were broken. I repaired these and them found the start capacitor was burnt. I need to replace it with the proper sized one. It seems this motor was used and allowed to over heat?
Removing tooling marks in the pan.
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I set the table over 10 degrees and 50 degrees and continued to file.
I did the same with the lower and upper bolt carrier. This will take some time.
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I am trying to build more than one gun.
The filing is going slowly because of my hands.
I have difficulty holding on to things for a long period of time.
Draw filing the perimeter of the pan.
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While resting I made a modification to the D&E test stand.
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I added hinges to be able to observe the action as the bolt closes.
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Tilting the test stand allows a direct view of the bolt when firing.
I did this so I am able to measure the head space.
It will also allow direct view of the extractor.
The bolt shown here does not have an extractor.
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I made a spanner wrench to tighten the closing nut.
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Wrench, nut and shaft.
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The nut sets in a recess in the upper bolt carrier.
The nut and the land on the shaft are turned to be flush.
One of the thrust bearing washers rests on this land.
I did not turn the shaft and nut at first. I found a little roughness as the shaft turned.
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Got tired of filing parts. Went on to other projects while waiting for
materials to arrive.
Could not get my truck to start for a week.
I had accuried a steel table with an old lathe attached to it from a man
named Murry. Very interisting man. Lots of stories of laying cable in the
swamps of Texas and Louisiana for the infamous Exon. He pass at 84 with cancer
and much pain. What a loss. Not even his son was interested in learning about his
metal working skills. He sold me an old Rhodes slotter for a song just to have someone use it.
He had another lathe I wanted but by the time I had saved the money he was gone
and so was the lathe. So was most of his other metal working tools.
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The lathe on the table is a Craftsman 101, missing lots of parts. I decided to repair it.
I replaced the missing motor with variable DC. I added a variable DC to the lead screw.
I made all the missing parts. The purpose was for barrel making. I set it to taper the
barrels by off setting the tail stock. This way I would not tie up my other lathe.
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I had all the same problems that Pmecer had when tapering. The first one turned well
for about 2/3 the length then would not stop with the chatter. The second went for
only an inch. I stopped and made a 4 point steady rest with bearings. This helped
until a closer look. There were still deep chatter marks under the smooth surface, Also it
was difficult to keep the barrels straight. One other thing was the great amount of heat.
One such barrel expanded to the point of scaring the dead center.
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I stopped and made a small cooling system with an aquarium pump. I used the formula
for water soluble oil of 4 gals water, a qt of oil and 3 cups of liquid soap. This formula
needs a little adjustment. The pump has a magnet as the armature. Any amount of
swarf on it will cause it to stop. I made a filter of an old sock and a coffee filter and loctite
the magnet to the plastic pump fins. Works much better but the coolant is still to thick.
I noticed that by placing my fingers on the barrel it would stop humming. I made a spring
loaded finger. It did not help. I made another one with 3 fingers but it did not help either.
No pictures of it.
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I ground different shapes of cutting tools. The best seemed to be a 1/4 hss tool with
a 1/8 radius. Until I tool it off for inspection. Chatter.
After sacrificing 6 barrels I stopped and switched over to a tool post grinder I made
before I knew what angular contact bearings were. I remover the steady rest and
tried to grind out the chatter marks. This worked except now I had under sized barrels
with flakes that look like the orange peal of a bad lacquer finish.
Grinding also produced much heat. I used the coolant while grinding.
Also seemed to improve the finish but it is hard to tell. I am trying
to produce something that will blue nicely.
This grinder is an awkward monster. I made it because I had just made a dovetail slide
as an exercise and needed a use for it. The spindle is of my awkward design and uses
plain bearings. I am going to disassemble the grinder and reuse the parts for something
else. The slide works great, though.
I stopped grinding and started making a proper tool post grinder using the proper bearings.
I will go back and double check the lathe for run out and rigidity.
I would ask Cutter how he achieves the finish on his barrels but I already know the answer.
MAGIC.
Here is that red monster tool post grinder
I made long ago. It was one of the first things
I made. I thought I was doing good.
It has standard ball bearings and a universal
motor. It was conroled with a router speed control.
Has run out and chatter.
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Its replacement is a high speed spindle. It uses angular contact
bearings. The bearings are pre-loaded. The motor is
high speed DC, variable speed. It is the same
spindle as on the Bonelle T&C grinder.
The wheels are held with a draw bar and are interchangeable.
Need to get the proper belt.
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Received the belt but for some strange reason
they were all 3.14 times longer than I thought
I had ordered. After checking the site I realised
that they are listed by diameter rather then length.
I spoke with a nice lady all got the entire order corrected.
This is a good source of belts, from one to one gazillion.
http://sdp-si.com/
Should be able to make a test grind next week.
Have plenty to do till then.
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I have some carbide tips similar to
Cutter\'s carbide cutter.
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Because of the angles this tip can be
used to cut and face without
changing its position.
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It reminds me
of the tangential tool or as it is
called, the diamond tool.
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I have a few tips that are broken on this
cutting edge. I made tool holders to use
the unbroken cutting edges.
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These tips cut the barrels but did not
leave the finish Cuter achieved. The
swarf was fine grained like pepper instead of curls.
They did not stop the chatter.
I had to make another tool post for the holders.
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As this reminded me of the diamond tool I made
one to fit the Craftsman lathe.
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There is not much room above the top slide.
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I made several test cuts.
This stopped the chatter. The cut was rough as I did not
sharpen the cutting tool with a radius. I just left
the HSS edges square for now. I have my T&C Grinder
set up for another project.
I need to check my phone. I need to re-size the pictures.
The belts arrived for the tool post grinder.
To my surprise it works very well. The free
motor speed is 12k rpm and with a load of
a .002 cut it is 9k-10k rpm. I added more
vent holes in the motor cover.
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I read a post on another site where the author
was going to purchase a saw blade sharpener
from Harbor Freight and use the motor for
a tool post grinder. As it attaches on a round rod
he was going to attach it to his round tool post.
I feel he is going to have the same problems
I had with the red monster. There will be chatter
from the grinder bearings as there is
no separate spindle.
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As I had one of these I checked the grinding wheel.
I made an arbor for it to fit my grinder.
The wheel is about 4\" in diameter and 1/8\" wide.
Worked pretty good.
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I used the grinder with coolant. It splashed
the coolant everywhere so I added guards.
I finished the spring loaded follow rest.
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This also surprised me as my first attempts
were not successful. Used with the diamond
tool and a HSS cutter it all but elimanated any chatter.
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I tried several carbide tools in the diamond holder.
Because of their more acute angles they dug
into the barrels and made a concave cut.
With the proper radius on a HSS cutter I believe
I have solved my chatter problem and
I can now go on to the next step.
I continued with the bolt body.
The material arrived from Online Metals.
I set up the band saw to cut them to length
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I used a 10 tooth blade, an 18 tooth would be better.
An abrasive cutoff would saw probably have been
faster but I did not want to apply heat at this time.
I faced them and removed the burr with a file.
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I cut a 5/16 x .080 slot, .313 from one end.
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That is a carpenter\'s clamp. I need to make
a more elagant adjustable vise stop.
I used a 1/16 edge radius tool to round over
the edges of a 5/16 x 3/8 W-1 flat bar.
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I set up the mini mill to part the bar into .250 length pieces.
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This will become the lug. It will be silver soldered
into the slot of the body. The slot will align it
and keep it in the correct place.
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I made a tray of sheet metal to hold the bodies.
I used a heavy bar as a counter weight.
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I used a spring center punch to indent 4 pips
on the slot. This allows room for the solder to flow.
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I cleaned the bodies with sulfuric acid and
rinsed with water. As this will corrode the steel
do not acid dip until right before soldering.
Place the flux soon after dipping as this will
protect the steel. If the steel is clean you should
see a slight rusty color in the slot. Do not
touch the slot after acid cleaning.
I am using an old cell phone camera. It does
not have much resolution but you can
still see the pips.
I cut two pieces of .060 dia wire solder
1/4 to 5/16 length. I flattened the solder before
setting in place. Keeps things from rolling.
This seems to be the correct amount of solder.
Less than this and I have had lugs that were not
fully covered. More and there was excess solder to remove.
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I placed a drop of flux over the solder, enough
to cover all when the lug is placed on top.
The flux is diluted with water about 50%.
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I cleaned the lugs in acid holding with a hemostat and rinsed with water.
Was careful not to touch the area to be soldered.
Placed in the slot and aligned with my fingers.
Made sure there was enough flux.
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The water in the flux will steam off as soon as heat is applied.
This will cause small parts to move. To avoid this I bring the heat
from the bottom slowly until the water is gone and the flux
turns white. At this point the flux will hold everything together.
I bring the torch tip closer until the flame is completely surrounding the bolt body.
Next the flux will start to turn clear and flow like water. Just before the body
turns a dull red the solder will start to melt. I leave the heat in place
and gently press down on the lug with a soldering tool. This puts the
lug in place and presses the solder from under it. The temperature
is now so that the solder will draw itself over the complete joint.
Everything is now a dull red.
I remove the heat and let everything air cool.
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I use a mapp gas and oxygen torch.
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It works will for silver solder but the oxygen bottles are expensive
and run out of gas just when you need it. I solved this by attaching a small
hose to my large oxygen bottle.
I continued on by turning the lugs to size.
I made the turning fixture as per plans.
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I colored the lug blue for clearity.
This is when I started to have trouble as some of the
lugs were harder than others.
I switched to a carbide cutter.
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I made the offset fixture per plan. Make sure
to get the 5.78 offset in the correct direction.
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I turned the offset to size.
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I faced the offset and center drilled.
then I drilled the #43 hole.
This is where more problems arose as this is
deep hole drilling.
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I broke a few bits before I stopped
and made a peck drill.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bh4L65V1SqQ
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Using this I have not broken another bit.
I also found that the center of the #43 hole
and the 5/16 hole were not lining up. So I
drilled the #43 hole as deep as I could so the
5/16 bit would meet it and follow it into the
center of the #43 hole.
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I drilled the 5/16 hole.
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As I am using the 4mm non rotating firing pins
I drilled the entire depth of the hole using a
letter Q bit. This is the tap sise for the 3/8 x 32 thread.
I then taped the threads by using first a tapered tap
and then a bottoming tap. I cut five threads.
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